Geography Commons^™

Negotiating Everyday Islam After Socialism: A Study Of The Kazakhs Of Bayan-Ulgii, Mongolia, Namara Brede

Geography Honors Projects

Using ethnographic interviews and participant observations from the Kazakh community of Bayan-Ulgii, Mongolia in June 2009, this study examines how Islamic discourses, practices, experiences, and scales of influence are negotiated in post-socialist Central Asia. To do this, local, national, and transnational dynamics of Mongolian Kazakh religious practice are considered alongside the individual-scale mediating roles of personal preference, social position, life course, power, and social networks. Islam in Bayan-Ulgii is shown to be integral to community and ethnic identity but also multifaceted, dynamic, and multi-scalar, militating against essentialist portrayals of Islam as monolithic or dichotomously split between “high” and “low” forms.

Random Forests Applied As A Soil Spatial Predictive Model In Arid Utah, Alexander Knell Stum

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Initial soil surveys are incomplete for large tracts of public land in the western USA. Digital soil mapping offers a quantitative approach as an alternative to traditional soil mapping. I sought to predict soil classes across an arid to semiarid watershed of western Utah by applying random forests (RF) and using environmental covariates derived from Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and digital elevation models (DEM). Random forests are similar to classification and regression trees (CART). However, RF is doubly random. Many (e.g., 500) weak trees are grown (trained) independently because each tree is trained with a new randomly …

A General-Purpose Parallel Raster Processing Programming Library Test Application Using A Geographic Cellular Automata Model, Qingfeng Guan, Keith C. Clarke

Geography Program: Faculty Publications

A general-purpose parallel Raster Processing programming Library (pRPL) was developed and applied to speed up a commonly used Cellular Automaton model with known tractability limitations. The library is suitable for use by geographic information scientists with basic programming skills, but who lack knowledge and experience of parallel computing and programming. pRPL is a general-purpose programming library that provides generic support for raster processing, including local-scope, neighborhood-scope, regional-scope, and global-scope algorithms as long as they are parallelizable. The library also supports multi-layer algorithms. Besides the standard data domain decomposition methods, pRPL provides a spatially-adaptive quad-tree-based decomposition to produce more evenly distributed …

Household Compost In Rock Island, Scott J. Fick

Tredway Library Prize for First-Year Research

No abstract provided.

Human-Wildlife Conflict Across Urbanization Gradients: Spatial, Social, And Ecological Factors, Amanda H. Gilleland

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As suburban and exurban residential developments continue to multiply in urban areas, they encroach on wildlife habitats leading to increased human-wildlife interactions. The animals involved in direct conflict with homeowners are often relocated or exterminated by the homeowners. Often the homeowners contact state licensed wildlife trappers to eliminate the problem animal. In this study I examined how landscape, ecological, and social factors influence the incidence of human-wildlife conflict of thirty two residential areas in the Tampa, Florida metropolitan area. These residential areas, totaling over 300 km2, are part of the urban development gradient representing a range of urban land use …

Cultural Diversity Or An Excuse For 'Othering' In The Us: A Case Study Of Filipino-American Lives, Laura Lambert

Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

The Eternal Flame: Politics Of The Olympic Games, Alyssa Gunstrom

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Historical Geocollaboration: The Implementation Of A Scoring System To Account For Uncertainty In Geographic Data Created In A Collaborative Environment, Anthony D. Contreras

Theses and Dissertations

A Geographic Information System (GIS) is an existing tool to create, manage, analyze and visualize data with a spatial component, and is used by many types of organizations in many fields. For most of the tasks and projects within these fields, a GIS provides highly accurate results. Under certain circumstances (Massive Scope, Widespread Expertise and Multivalency), a GIS fails to provide adequate results in the field of historical geography, for example. Crowdsourcing tools like Wikipedia and Open Street Map (OSM) address some of these issues, but not all, and introduce new problems. This project focuses on geographic data dealing with …

An Analysis Of The Conservation Importance Of Amazon Borderlands Using Geographic Information Systems, Ben Weinstein, David S. Salisbury, Kimberly Britt Klinker

Geography and the Environment Poster Presentations

At 6,000,000 km2, the Amazon basin is a critical hotspot of global biodiversity. The Amazon lowland is often incorrectly portrayed as a single homogenous unit, a vast and unpopulated region (Eva & Huber 2005). In actuality, nine countries comprise the Amazon, creating a mosaic of ecological, cultural and political boundaries (Manne 2003, Maffi 2005). Our aim is to test whether these Amazonian borderlands have greater conservation significance than the Amazonian interior. The political geography has profound effects on conservation as each country designates and maintains area differently (Eva & Huber 2005). Depending on management type, protected areas shelter ecosystems from …

Norumbega News, No.14 (Spring 2010), Osher Library Associates

Friends of OML, Occasional Publications

Issue No.14, Spring 2010

Osher Map Library and the Smith Center for Cartographic Education

Portland, Maine

A Comparative Study Of The Murray/Taylorsville And Salt Lake City Greenway Systems, Nicholas G. Baker, Evan Pressley, David Munson, Mark Christensen

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Greenways are an important part of an urban system. They are linear strips of vegetated area that extend through or around cities. Greenways have various environ-mental, social, and economic benefits that contribute to healthy communities. Characteristics of greenway systems can be quantified and measured, allowing comparison between study areas. Our study uses landscape metrics to compare the total area, total edge, number of patches, and connectivity of the Salt Lake City and Murray, Utah greenway systems.

Internal Displacement: Recent History, Visions For The Action Ahead, Mayela Calderon

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research project is meant entirely to highlight the suffering of millions of people around the world outside of their homes and inspire the addressing of this. Internally displaced people face human rights violations on all levels starting from political representation all the way to their basic needs and when their national government who has the primary responsibility, is either unable or unwilling to do something about this, it is up to the international community and civil society to ensure these rights are being fulfilled. The mainstreaming of this topic is essential to pressure influential actors to mobilize and achieve …

Does More Green Equal More Green?: A Comparison Of Vegetation In Rich And Poor Neighborhoods In Utah County, Alan Peters, Roxanne Yorgason, Cinta Nielsen, Alison Fletcher

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Greenery is an important part of any urban environment. Besides being visually appealing, landscaping performs important ecological functions such as food and habitats for some creatures and cooling effects for the urban ecosystem. For these and other reasons, places with green lawns and mature trees are highly desirable. Landscaping, however, is not cheap. Planting and maintaining appropriate trees, shrubbery, or grasses can be costly to private homeowners, businesses, or municipalities. This can result in unequal amounts of trees and other greenery between rich and less affluent communities, and a disparity between rich and poor neighborhoods within the same city. Using …

Examining The Impacts Of Habitat Fragmentation Along The Western Border Of Yellowstone National Park, Alex D. Johnson, Vania Hernandez, Janelle Sands, Matthew Bekker

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Landscape Ecology combines the disciplines of geography and ecology to give a unique spatial approach, which allows extrapolation across scales Our area of study is located on the SW border of Yellowstone National Park and the adjacent National Forest. (Fig.1) Different land management practices between the National Park and National Forest, in particular, deforestation in the National Forest, can affect the ecosystem in the greater Yellowstone area. (Fig. 2)

Greenway Systems In Salt Lake City And Tallahassee A Comparitive Analysis, Derek Bruton, Lydia Michela, Tyler Terry, Morgan Osborne

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Landscape ecology is the study of the relationship between spatial pattern and ecological processes on a range of landscape scales. One aspect of land¬scape ecology that we chose to study was green¬ways. Greenways are long, narrow corridors that differ from the surrounding landscape types; they are used for recreation, and for pedestrian and bi¬cycle traffic. We compared the greenways in Salt Lake City and Tallahassee (Figures 3 and 4), using landscape metrics (methods of quantifying land¬scape pattern) as tools to define characteristics of the greenway systems. To determine which city had a stronger greenway system, we based our conclusions on …

Legacy Parkway: Evaluating The Effects Of Construction On Wetland Patterns, Nate Dorsey, Jillian Brandley, Joshua Fawcett, Michael Johnson

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

The Legacy Parkway is a 14-mile highway that was built in 2008 to alleviate traffic congestion in Davis County, Utah. The parkway was built near the Great Salt Lake in an area with many wetlands. Prior to construction there was a great deal of controversy regarding how the parkway might negatively affect the wetlands. This research attempts to answer the following question: How did construction of the Legacy Parkway impact wetland patterns?

Modeling Large-Scale Historical Migration Patterns Using Family History Records, Brian Bunker, Elias Wise, Eric Severson, Sam Otterstrom

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Location has a powerful effect, and humans seek to understand not only where they are, but where they have come from. Thus, genealogy and migration are both important human concepts, and one can help to illuminate the other. Historical migration studies use records of all types to attempt to model and explain the movement of individuals and families. Our purpose is to use the new Family Search database compiled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members to create a flexible search engine which will enable visualization and analysis of migration by community or by place …

Commodifying My Culture: An “Appalachian” Reflects On Her Role In Sustaining A Limited Discourse Of Appalachia, Amanda Fickey

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

No abstract provided.

A Greenway Runs Through It: The Midtown Greenway And The Social Landscape Of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Aaron M. Brown

Geography Honors Projects

Minneapolis’ Midtown Greenway is a 5.5 mile bicycle and pedestrian corridor that replaced a grade-separated railroad line in 2000 and expanded to its current length in 2007. In an era of reinvestment in American inner cities and a heightened political awareness of both urban transportation alternatives and public spaces, the academic field of geography has much to contribute to the discussion about the viability, effectiveness, and success of projects such as this adaptive reuse of reclaimed, deindustrialized space. My research investigates results from a survey of 223 Greenway users, exploring participants’ demographics, residential proximity to the trail, and purposes for …

Who Draws The Line In El Paso, Texas: Multiscalar Interactions And The Chances For Border Reform, Robert L. Heyman

Geography Honors Projects

The question of how borders are defined and enforced has always been an important issue both to the state and to residents between whom make and must deal with those decisions. This project examines El Paso, Texas as a case study for shaping a more progressive future for border and immigration enforcement. It does so by reporting on 16 interviews with key actors in border policy discussions. El Paso offers an excellent opportunity to study how border and immigration enforcement approaches are negotiated between scales, including federal enforcement agencies, state government, city and county officials, and community activists. Immigration enforcement …